Hugh Leonard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugh Leonard (born John Keyes Byrne, 1926) is an Irish dramatist and journalist. His first play, The Big Birthday Suit, was produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1956. Since then, he has been a prolific playwright, with at least 18 plays to his name. His Selected Plays of Hugh Leonard appeared in 1992. He has also written two volumes of autobiography, Home Before Night (1979) and Out After Dark (1989). Some of his essays and journalism are collected in Leonard's Last Book (1978) and A Peculiar People and Other Foibles (1979). Until 2006 he wrote a humorous monthly column, "The Curmudgeon", for the Sunday Independent newspaper. He has a passion for cats, and restaurants, and an abhorrence of Gay Byrne.[1]
During the 1960s and 1970s, Leonard adapted a number of classic novels for British television. In 1969, he won a Jacob's Award for his TV scripts for Nicholas Nickleby and Wuthering Heights.
Living in his hometown of Dalkey, he was educated at Harold Boy's National School Dalkey.
Leonard received the Tony Award in 1977 for the play Da, a supernatural comedy based in large measure on his own youth and his adoptive father.
Leonard, now retired as a Sunday Independent columnist, still displays an acerbic humour. In an interview by Brendan O'Connor he was asked if it galled him that Gay Byrne was now writing his old column. His reply was, "It would gall me more if he was any good at it."[1]
He is patron of the Dublin Theatre Festival.
